CANON CITY— Jeremy Stodghill isn’t the kind of Christian who believes the Gospels map an earthly alternative to life’s hard knocks.
Lori Stodghill was 31-one years old, seven-months pregnant with twin boys and feeling sick when she arrived at St. Thomas More hospital in Cañon City on New Year’s Day 2006. She was vomiting and short of breath and she passed out as she was being wheeled into an examination room. Medical staff tried to resuscitate her but, as became clear only later, a main artery feeding her lungs was clogged and the clog led to a massive heart attack. Stodghill’s obstetrician, Dr. Pelham Staples, who also happened to be the obstetrician on call for emergencies that night, never answered a page. His patient died at the hospital less than an hour after she arrived and her twins died in her womb.
A uranium mining and milling company for years blamed for contamination in the Cañon City area is now refusing to pay state fines levied for failing to clean up a toxic pond threatening Denver’s water supply. According to letters obtained by the Colorado Independent, Cotter Corp. – which owns the Cotter Mill near Cañon City – has declined to pay a $55,000 fine for uranium pollution 1,200 times state standards.
A Canadian company looking to build the first new uranium mill in the United States in nearly three decades is burning through cash at a rate that could leave it broke right about the time it hopes to secure its final approvals from Colorado public health officials.
Environmentalists and local politicians Friday cheered a Colorado Division of Reclamation Mining and Safety order late Thursday directing Denver-based Cotter Corp. to begin curtailing drinking water contamination from an inactive Jefferson County uranium mine this summer.
The state Senate Wednesday passed a tough new uranium processing bill that will require companies to clean up past toxic pollution before being allowed to expand operations.
House Bill 1348 (pdf), the Uranium Processing Accountability Act, met little resistance in…
Sharyn Cunningham and her family bought five acres in Cañon City’s Lincoln Park neighborhood in 1994, and for eight years they used a drinking water well contaminated by the nearby Cotter uranium mill.
A coalition of conservation groups warily eyeing a possible resurgence of Colorado uranium mining in the wake of a national push for more nuclear energy rallied support for a bipartisan uranium cleanup bill at the Capitol Thursday.
MONTROSE — Many residents of Montrose County and surrounding counties in Southwest Colorado, have stood in opposition to the proposed Piñon Ridge uranium mill. “Not in my back yard,” they say. Cañon City residents support the opposition. They didn’t take that stand years ago and have suffered debilitating health effects associated with the metal the Navajo Indians call “yellow death.”
MONTROSE — Montrose County commissioners delayed a decision on a controversial uranium mill proposal Wednesday after nearly six hours of public testimony that underscored deep divisions between longtime mining families and residents of neighboring Telluride and San Miguel County.
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